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Friday, 17 December 2010

The North Rhine-Westphalian city of Dülmen struck Adolf Hitler from its list of honorary citizens on Thursday. But the Nazi dictator still retains similar recognition in towns across Germany, experts say.

After two previous attempts failed, the Dülmen city council plans to remove Hitler, the town’s fifth honorary citizen, from the list posthumously – a move historians say is long overdue.

On April 6, 1933 city officials voted unanimously to honour the Nazi leader.

Centre-left Social Democratic council group leader Waltraud Bednarz wrote in her September proposal to remove Hitler from the list that the action was not necessary, but “more that appropriate.”

Honorary citizens lose their title at death, but Bednarz argued that the names of other former recipients of the title should not be tarnished by association.

“We don’t want to put the others in a row with Hitler and want to finally remove this honorary citizenship,” she said.

The town is not alone in expunging the embarrassing detail from their records.

Historians estimate that Hitler was named an honorary citizen of about 4,000 German communities before his death, but there are no official figures on how many towns and cities have actually rescinded the title.

This is due to the fact that many official records were destroyed during World War II, said historian Thomas Schaarschmidt from the Potsdam centre for historic research (ZZF).

But even in the cities where records survived, it took decades for them to countermand the honour, he said.

Hitler wasn’t taken off Düsseldorf’s list until 2000. And in Bad Doberan, where the 2007 G8 summit was held at Heiligendamm, officials didn’t get around it until shortly before the event began. The city of Gladbeck near Münster just took care of it last week.

“Most of the cancellations go back to the 1990s,” Schaarschmidt explained, though some cities, such as Emmerich, did have war criminals removed as early as 1946.

“But there were decisions to leave Hitler on the lists for historical reasons,” Schaarschmidt added, explaining that some cities wanted a record of how they had been mired in Nazi politics.

But Dülmen’s move is long overdue, he said, calling it an important “symbolic act.”

John Abraham Godson, a Polish citizen born and raised in Nigeria, has been sworn in as the first black member of Poland's parliament. Mr Godson had served as a councillor in the city of Lodz before taking up a parliamentary seat, vacated by a party colleague after local elections. His entry into parliament has created a media stir in the mainly white country. He came to Poland in the 1990s, opening an English-language school and working as a pastor in a Protestant church. He has since married a Polish woman and the couple have four children.

Beaten up twice
A member of the centre-right Civic Platform party, he was appointed to the seat vacated by party colleague Hanna Zdanowskaafter after she became mayor of Lodz. It is still quite rare to see black people even in the Polish capital Warsaw, Poland's most cosmopolitan city, the BBC's Adam Easton reports. Racism is still a problem in Poland, where it is not uncommon for well-educated people to make racist jokes, our correspondent says. Mr Godson was beaten up twice in the early 1990s but he says attitudes to black people in Poland are changing for the better, particularly since the country joined the EU six years ago. Speaking earlier to Polish radio, Mr Godson said: "I am from Lodz, I will live here, I want to die here and I want to be buried here."

Convicted killer John Ditullio Jr. returned to court today to learn his sentence.

He dressed in black and refused to allow the application of makeup to cover his offensive tattoos, something that was done each day during his trial.

"I wanted the jury to see me ," he said.

Despite seeing the swastika and the expletive tattooed on Ditullio's neck, the panel of six men and six women deliberated for only about 30 minutes before sparing him a death sentence.

Instead, they recommended he serve life in prison for the 2006 murder of 17-year-old Kristofer King. Pasco Circuit Judge Michael Andrews accepted the sentence, adding a concurrent 15 years behind bars for the attempted murder of Patricia Wells.

King and Wells were attacked inside Wells' Teak Street mobile home. Wells was severely cut on her hands, arms and face but escaped. King, a friend of Wells' son, died of stab wounds to his head.

Assistant State Attorney Mike Halkitis contended the crime was motivated by Ditullio's white supremacist beliefs and his association with a neo-Nazi group that congregated at a mobile home next door to Wells.

Halkitis said Wells was attacked because she was friends with a black man and King because he was gay.

The eight-day retrial ended Wednesday with the jury finding Ditullio guilty of first-degree murder and attempted second-degree murder. Ditullio's first trial a year ago ended in a hung jury, with the panel leaning 10-2 toward acquittal.

Ditullio, 24, didn't seem all that bent on avoiding a death penalty. Aside from revealing his tattoos, he didn't allow his attorneys to present evidence of his tough upbringing and mental illness, evidence typically used to help defendants avoid death sentences.

Ditullio also seemed to take a casual attitude when he addressed the jury.

"I'm not going to beg you people for my life or my death," he said. "Do what you do, OK? Life in Florida is death in Florida. But the people that just sat up here and testified that they love me and that they want to be part of my life, that's who I ask you to render your verdict on. Not me."

Ditullio's grandmother, Edith Ditullio, and sister, Cynthia Lewandowski, told the jury they loved him and would continue a relationship with him if he went to prison for life.

Morris Standifer and Adam Jones, convicted felons serving lengthy prison terms, testified Ditullio was their friend when they were in the Land O' Lakes Jail.

Their friendships came despite the fact they are black and Ditullio belonged to a neo-Nazi group.

"I've never heard no racial comments come out of his mouth, ever," Jones said.

Defense attorney Danny Hernandez said jurors should spare his client because he was only 20 at the time of the crime and had no prior felony convictions.

The attack happened just after midnight on March 23, 2006, when a man wearing a gas mask barged into Wells' trailer. He slashed Wells and stabbed King, who was there using a computer.

At trial, defense attorney Bjorn Brunvand argued that Shawn Plott, another member of the neo-Nazi group, committed the stabbings.

Brunvand pointed to Wells' description of her attacker as having blond hair: Plott has blond hair; Ditullio has dark brown hair.

Brunvand also argued that Wells varied on the attacker's height.

Wells' blood was found on the left boot Ditullio was wearing that night. The defense argued that blood taken from the boot should be disregarded because it became contaminated during testing.

But testimony indicated the sample that contained Wells' DNA was not contaminated.

King's mother, Charlene Bricken, wasn't swayed by the defense case. She addressed Ditullio before he was sentenced.

"You know, John, you talked so much about being young and how influenced you were," Bricken said. "But what about Kris, who was 17 years old and 20 days? What chance did he have? And why did you have the right to take his life, or anybody's?